audit control

[jcarmody]

A new engineer in our SQA (Software Quality Assurance) department mentioned some mechanism for ensuring that test sequences run in production are the same versions of the sequences as when they were reviewed and approved by SQA.  He mentioned "audit control" and said TestStand has a way to generate a file containing some sort of hash value representing the approved version of all sequences, and that modifying any sequence would result in a run-time check failing and a note on the final report that the sequence isn't SQA approved.

Can you help me understand how to implement this?  The Senior SQA guy's eyes lit up when he heard about this.

[jcarmody]

Has there been no response because nobody has heard of this?  Can a TestStand expert says there's no native function?

[Dennis_Knutson]

I've never heard of anything like this.

[Ryan_T]

Hi jcarmody,

I believe that what you are trying to accomplish can be done through the Differ Application. I would keep one copy of the sequence file as a standard and always use a different copy of the sequence file to run tests.  Then you can run the differ application in order to make sure nothing has changed in the sequence file. 

Another option you could pursue is to create a user that only has privileges to run sequence files instead of editing and saving them.

Thanks

[jcarmody]

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@Dennis Knutson wrote:

I've never heard of anything like this.

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 I'm glad to hear that.

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@Ryan T wrote:

Hi jcarmody,

I believe that what you are trying to accomplish can be done through the Differ Application. I would keep one copy of the sequence file as a standard and always use a different copy of the sequence file to run tests.  Then you can run the differ application in order to make sure nothing has changed in the sequence file.

Another option you could pursue is to create a user that only has privileges to run sequence files instead of editing and saving them.

Thanks

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Thanks.  I'll try the Differ.  My question wasn't prompted because operators can edit sequences (I alone have access), this was from the SQA department that wants to ensure that I don't change anything outside of the formal change process.

[Teds]

Here is what we do where I work for.. Audit Control....

Install Test application (  built using TestStand Deployment Utility ) and during the installation runs  batch file that generates the CRC of the entire 'Project" source when installed..  Write the CRC into a file and encrypt the value.  This would be the 'released' CRC of the project and this value SHOULD never change.

The entire Project Source consists of any VIs, sequence files, and support files that are located in the C:\Program Files\<project directory>

The operator interface application is automated to select any program to run based on the barcode scanned, so if a certain barcode indicates project X, the CRC is computed for project X and compared to the CRC in the file ( generated during installation ).  If the values do not match, and error is generated notifying the operator that the source has changed on disk and it will need to reloaded.    We have it setup to generate this check before the sequence has started running so the report is not generated yet.

So in conclusion, there is no native TestStand functions that I know of that can help you....

Thanks,

PH